In WiFi™ and other wireless local area networks (WLANs), a conventional arrangement for the association of a smart phone, computer, or other wireless device to a wireless router or other access point is to configure the access point to listen for all approaching stations wishing to associate themselves with the access point, and process those association requests in the order in which they are received
However, this approach in known WiFi™ can entail some drawbacks. Those drawbacks include the fact that a first-in, first-out (FIFO) model for association requests takes no account of the relative priority of the subscribers or their data traffic. Thus, for instance, in a busy public network environment such as an airport, a user who initiates an association transaction to access a relatively low-priority data service may obtain a successful association with an access point, simply because that user's device was detected before a user having higher-priority service needs. This can be the case even if the time of initial contact between one station or device and the access point differs from the following station or device by only a moment. For instance, a user attempting to access an email account may have their association request serviced before that of a user who is in the middle of a streaming video download, even though interruption of a video or other media download may create greater disruption for that user than for the email user, simply because the email user's device generated a probe request before the video user, if only by a moment.
It may be desirable to provide methods and systems for dynamic association ordering based on service differentiation in wireless local area networks, in which the association event between a station and an access point can be prioritized and ordered according to the nature, priority, or importance of the service needs of the various users approaching or competing for wireless connections, based on a set of prioritization criteria designed to allow the highest-priority users to acquire a network connection at the soonest possible time.